PART THREE

DISCIPLINE: ITS PROVINCE AND END

What is discipline? It is the habit of obedience. It is submissiveness to order and control. It is subjection to rule. It is a training to act in accordance with established rules. Discipline obviously must be control. Definition after definition may be sought, all ultimately designating discipline as control. Though it is known that discipline is control or submissiveness to order and system, still there remains much to be said to clear up the idea of discipline. In examining the province of discipline, many questions arise. Does discipline guarantee that a teacher is able to punish all offenses with the correct punishment, and by so doing insure against the recurrence of offense; or does it mean any given code of rules that will prevent misdemeanors; or does it mean the assigning of punishment for offenses so as to display vengeance against the wrong doer, suppressing him for the time being, but instigating him to further wrong when the opportunity offers itself? It means far more than can be fully explained in any brief answer.

The Province of Discipline

Discipline is that vital control of an individual that molds character. All those agencies that are employed to perfect and round out character are disciplinary devices.

“The daily discipline of a good school is a constant instruction in morals. The idea of order that is suggested in the appearance of the school is here perceived in action. There is a regulated system into which the individual must enter. He must subordinate his own desires and impulses to the general social welfare. Thus he learns the elementary virtue of obedience. He takes orders and obeys them. He becomes accustomed to an authority which he must respect.”[9]

Were every product of the school-room a perfectly disciplined product, the pupil would be self-controlling and the prophecy that perfect discipline would annihilate prisons, reforms and courts of justice would become a fact. A human being self-controlled after experience under a sound system of discipline would offer little difficulty as a subject of school management. Since discipline is a training in self-control and self-direction, which are prime elements in character, discipline is indispensable in character building.

Training in self-mastery is impossible without a prearranged determination of conduct. Some one must analyze the possible types of activity and wisely direct the immature person in choosing his standards of conduct.

Footnote 9:

Sneath and Hodges, op. cit., pp. 194-5.

The End in Discipline

Assuming that the teacher understands the great importance of discipline, it becomes necessary, before discussing its underlying principles, to consider some other phases of the subject. First of all it is most important to understand the end to be achieved in discipline. It is true that all aimless discipline is poor discipline whatever may be the teacher’s zeal. A clear knowledge of the end to be attained is not only important as a guide to methods of discipline, but will fully predetermine the results. The question now arises: “Just what is the end to be sought in discipline?” Some one may say, “The end to be sought in discipline is good order;” some one else may say, “application.” It is neither chiefly. These are mere conditions of successful school work, and are not at all ultimate ends to be attained through discipline. The teacher who regards these as the ends of discipline is not only likely to use improper means, but will be satisfied with a mere semblance of success. The true end of discipline is none other than the achievement of self-control. This includes an efficient moral training by: (1) the awakening of proper sentiments, (2) quickening of the conscience, (3) enlightening of moral judgment, (4) training the will to act habitually from high and worthy motives, (5) thoughtfulness as to the rights of others and (6) a practical religious training.

Bagley discovers three chief functions of discipline: (1) the creation and preservation of conditions that are essential to orderly progress of the work for which the school exists; (2) “The preparation of the pupils for effective participation in an organized adult society;” (3) “The gradual impression of the fundamental lessons of self-control.”

“Discipline is, therefore, the last directive factor of the educative process. It is to the soul what logic or geometry is to the mind, or gymnastics to the body: it aims at bracing the will. But it has been seen that self-direction grows out of external direction; self-discipline out of the discipline of the home and the school. External discipline is good only when it does lead to the development of self-control.”[10]

Footnote 10:

Welton and Blandford, op. cit., pp. 156-7.

The Teacher as a Concrete Ideal

A clear vision of the end to be attained in discipline presupposes that the teacher embody every ideal of self-control that is needed to build up the perfectly rounded-out character. The teacher is the soul of his measures. The child is a pilgrim, needing to be led; a growing entity, needing to be nourished. Then it follows that the teacher becomes the ideal—a living, growing, real ideal for the pupil. This is not true in a general and abstract way only, for in every phase of his work, the teacher must by the very nature of the process adapt himself—his thought, his action, his feeling, _his life_—to what the pupil is and should next become. Here it becomes apparent that the teacher is not a remote or unattainable ideal, but a very near and present help for every succeeding activity of the pupil—a help-meet for good. The remote end of discipline, self-control, is realized by a constant presentation of the ideal embodied in the teacher, by a vitalizing association with the child. In this way the ideals of the teacher dominate the life of the child.

There is a story extant that an eagle was hatched with a brood of goslings. Unconscious of its eagle nature, it kept to the earth with its unnatural mates, until one day an eagle soaring along, swooped down near it and touched it with the spirit of the freedom of the upper air. It took wing into the realms of its natural abode. The child, beautiful in his simple life, needs but the touch of that ideal embodied in a spirit that will bring him into his rightful sphere. Many years ago a venerable pastor, whose life was a fountain of constant inspiration for good, returned to the scenes of his boyhood and called upon the aged pedagogue who had taught him in his youth. He reported the good work he believed he had accomplished. He told the teacher that he was regarded as a bad boy in his school days, but that the pedagogue had turned him into paths of right, where-upon the old man asked, “What was it I said?” The worthy pastor replied, “Ah, it was not what you said; it was your life.”

The teacher’s life, his ideals, his habits will be lived over again in those whom he teaches. Thus it can be seen that it is not sufficient for the teacher to set up imaginary ends and theories for realizing them in pupils; he himself must be the realized end. It is scarcely worth while for a teacher to set up as an end in the pupils the formation of correct habits and forms of thought without realizing them in himself. It need not be said that a teacher who can not think with scientific patience and precision can not train others to such patience and precision. Honesty can be cultivated only by him who is honest. Truth can be cultivated only by him who is truth-loving. The love of work can be taught only by him who works. Noble thinking can be stimulated only by him who is imbued with nobleness of thought. The idealized spirit of faith and hope can shine forth only from the soul that hopes and has the faith that radiated from the spirit of the Teacher of Galilee. “In another aspect discipline is a relation between the child and the teacher, and here the contribution of the teacher is his personality and the force of his will, to which the child responds with trust, obedience and the will to please.”[11]

Footnote 11:

Welton and Blandford, op. cit., p. 169.

Both Good and Bad Traits Are Copied

This introduces the distinction between conscious and unconscious instruction. The teacher by planned and immediate efforts, by definite and formal instruction, draws the pupil into his own more perfect thought and life; but much of the influence exerted by the teacher is unconscious and without forethought; effort and purpose would diminish it. Pupils are so susceptible to the silent influence of the teacher that they are supposed to make some permanent change each time they come into the presence of the teacher. There is a reason for this belief. Experience and observation have taught that personal contact works marvellously on the young who are continually in the presence of those whom they admire. Pupils instinctively copy the teacher, even in the case of mannerisms. Thrice fortunate is the teacher who possesses a strong personality, if his life incarnates all that is ideal and beautiful. Pupils assimilate both the evil and the good. How expedient it is then that they find only beautiful traits and a wholesome spirit which, like a fragrance filling the air, surrounds the noble-minded and warm-hearted teacher. Not so much by the daily task imposed and the instruction meted out as by the silent worship of the heart, does the child flower into beautiful life, and ripen into worthy manhood or womanhood.

Every teacher should be to the child a worthy model. Thus, by admiration and worship directed toward a superior, would the pupil realize the worth and beauty of all the good in the true teacher’s life. Using the wisest and most precise method of instruction does not fill the measure of the teacher’s responsibility. After all the pupil is circumscribed and continues to walk on earth among common things, unless quickened by a touch from the hovering spirit in the higher life of a teacher.

In a former chapter it has been pointed out that the school, as a home for the child during his school career, definitely molds character. Also, the teacher’s intellectual qualifications have been fully set forth. But meeting these requirements alone cannot insure success for the teacher. In this chapter the moral influence of the teacher has been clearly explained as an agency in the character building of the child. Discipline has been interpreted as a training in self-control, and self-control as a prime element in character. Then it must be evident that _discipline is the teacher’s one great function_. When the teacher has directed his every effort and energy toward discipline, he is doing his utmost to build permanent, worthy character, providing that he possesses every attribute of the true teacher and uses those underlying principles of discipline, that alone can make _true discipline_ possible.

“In childhood the trainer makes the child; during adolescence the youth makes himself. In childhood habits are forged by the unreasoned processes of reiteration; during youth they are made by voluntary acceptance of an inner ideal and the conscious nurture of that ideal. For the child habit-making should be as unconscious as breathing; for the youth it should be his deliberate and high-born duty. A wise teacher will never talk habits to children; before they know it, he will have them chained—no, that is a hateful and vicious figure—he will have them free as the wings of a bird in the unconscious and happy regulations of their lives.”[12]

Footnote 12:

Arthur Holmes, op. cit., p. 216.

Summary

1. Discipline is defined as a training to act in accordance with established moral principles.

2. If true discipline could obtain, most school-room problems would cease to exist and there would be no need of courts of justice and penal institutions.

3. The end of discipline is self-control on the part of the child.

4. Discipline is necessary for the production of worthy character.

5. A clear understanding of the end to be attained in discipline will decide the nature of the methods to be employed.

6. The teacher is the agent who must embody the ideal of self-control and thereby make perfect discipline possible.

7. It is impossible to secure any results in discipline unless its ideal is first embodied in the teacher’s life.

8. The teacher’s ideal must be lived out in his own life unconsciously. There can be no successful attempt on the part of the teacher to live in accordance with an artificial ideal.

9. The teacher’s influence over the child helps or hinders the growth of good character.

10. Pupils instinctively copy the teacher’s ideal.

11. Discipline is the teacher’s greatest function.